PROVIDENCE — Local protesters joined the National Day of Action against government surveillance by rallying outside the Federal Building on Exchange Street in Kennedy Plaza.About 20 people held up signs...

PROVIDENCE — Local protesters joined the National Day of Action against government surveillance by rallying outside the Federal Building on Exchange Street in Kennedy Plaza.

About 20 people held up signs and a large banner that said: “Dear U.S. Government: Stop Spying On Us!!” Organized jointly by Rhode Island MoveOn.org and the R.I. Coalition to Defend Human and Civil Rights, the protest was part of a national effort called The Day We Fight Back.

As a Providence police officer and officers in Homeland Security jackets kept the walk open for pedestrians, and a Homeland Security SUV was parked across the street, protester Greg Gerritt observed that “clearly the Department of Homeland Security and Providence police don’t have anything better to do than waste their time watching a bunch of gray-haired people” protesting outside the Federal Building.

His question: “How many people would vote for the government to spy on us?” was met by boos.

“Fight back,” urged Robert Scott Perry, 52, of Portsmouth. “It’s the only way to ensure our rights.”

Protesters asked citizens to write to their members of Congress about limiting the powers of the National Security Agency.

“What the NSA is doing is clearly unconstitutional,” said Chris Currie, an organizer from MoveOn.org. The data it is collecting on Americans could be used for blackmail, extortion or retribution, he said. “It’s like a disaster waiting to happen.” He called the NSA “a huge corporate welfare program for the military, industrial, Homeland Security establishment.”

One sign depicted eyeballs with the words, “Don’t like being watched? Neither do we.”

Randall Rose, an organizer from the Occupy Providence movement, said he did think that some government spying, on other countries, is OK, but made the point that “if the British had had something like NSA, we would not have been able to set up our own form of democracy.”

The American people are waking up, Rose said, and asking themselves what they should do. “If you put your head down … you’re making sure your children and grandchildren don’t have the freedom we have now. It could be much worse. Computers could become the greatest tool ever known for … taking away your freedom.”

“Right now we live in interesting times,” Rose said, “because we still have traditions from an earlier age of respecting privacy.”

Perry asserted that the NSA was recording and storing people’s entire conversations.

“If the government hears everything we say, it changes the way we talk to each other,” he said. “They are shutting us up. They can’t shut us up.”